
Moving up or down the ladder a bit seems to stop most - if not all - of the odd forces. This is enough to cause the craft to spin and visibly change the orbit. Problem: A Kerbal on a ladder impels a force on the craft. There is a setting in settings.cfg, which is also in the settings screen, that can help your Kerbal stay on the ladder: Also, Kerbals should remain on a ladder at all times. Take this into account when designing and planning your missions. If you need to work on one craft from parts from another, dock them first. Still, they will eventually drift and I'd still recommend in most situations to restrict all work to a single craft. So long as your craft are still relative to each other, they will remain so even through multiple moving of parts around. Solution: In 1.11.1 this has gotten much better. It also makes constructing with a free-flying Kerbal difficult. This makes free-form construction across multiple ships difficult. This is worse than regular orbital drift of nearby vessels, as each construction action impels a bit of force to all things involved, including the Kerbal. Problem: Ships and Engineers drift relative to each other. If anybody has other problems (even without solutions) I'd love to hear them as well, so we can find ways around them until they are (hopefully) fixed.
If anybody has better (or even just different) solutions to these problems, I'd love to hear them.
I'm sure all the bugs (at least the worst ones) will be addressed eventually, but until then here are some workarounds to issues I've found. Add to that the various issues and bugs and it can be a huge downside to an otherwise fantastic addition to the game. It makes so much possible, but is itself very difficult and prone to error. I've had some time in orbit and I've got to say construction is a double edged sword. Please keep discussion to seeking, finding, and discussing solutions, not simply lamenting about the issues.